Nvidia Shares Surge 60% Defying "Fintwit" Predictions Post-DeepSeek R1 Launch

Santa Clara, CA – Nvidia Corporation has seen its stock price surge by an impressive 60% since the launch of DeepSeek R1, a period during which "fintwit"—the financial community on Twitter—had widely predicted a market top for the chipmaker. This significant gain underscores Nvidia's continued dominance in the artificial intelligence sector, despite initial concerns sparked by the emergence of new, cost-efficient AI models.

The catalyst for the earlier market skepticism was the introduction of DeepSeek R1, an open-source reasoning model developed by Chinese AI firm DeepSeek. The DeepSeek-R1-Lite-Preview became accessible on November 20, 2024, followed by the full DeepSeek-R1 model on January 20, 2025. DeepSeek claimed its R1 model achieved performance comparable to OpenAI's o1 for complex reasoning tasks, but with a reported training cost of less than $6 million—a fraction of the billions invested by leading U.S. AI companies.

The low development cost and open-source nature of DeepSeek R1 triggered a notable sell-off in the tech market in late January 2025. Nvidia's stock, a bellwether for the AI industry, experienced a sharp decline of 17-18% around January 27, 2025, contributing to an estimated $1 trillion being wiped off U.S. tech stocks by January 28, 2025. This downturn fueled the "fintwit" narrative that Nvidia's growth had peaked.

However, Nvidia quickly countered the bearish sentiment. The company acknowledged DeepSeek R1 as "an excellent AI advancement," emphasizing that such sophisticated models would ultimately drive greater demand for high-performance GPUs, particularly for AI inference. Nvidia highlighted that DeepSeek utilized export-compliant versions of its GPUs, reinforcing its position as a foundational technology provider even amidst geopolitical tensions and new market entrants.

The subsequent 60% increase in Nvidia's stock price demonstrates the company's robust market position and the insatiable demand for its specialized hardware. This growth has been sustained by ongoing advancements, including the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, which promises further enhancements in AI inference performance and efficiency. Nvidia's ability to turn a perceived threat into an opportunity for increased GPU utilization has solidified its trajectory, proving resilient against initial market jitters and analyst predictions.